Chapter 4: "When It's Smokin' It's Cookin'..."

Pa was a man of many talents. He could fix things most people would throw away. What's more, whatever he fixed always seemed to work better than new when he finished with it. He could hunt rabbits, pheasants and quail with a slingshot and seldom missed. I never saw anyone beat him in a shooting match, whether it was with a rifle or a pistol. After he got back from the Great War in France the Army wanted to keep him in as a training officer.

He worked harder and better than any other man I ever saw. He even had a passable baritone voice. I liked to hear him and Ma when they harmonized at church sometimes. I could go on for a long time telling of my Pa's many abilities and achievements. But he could not cook. I believe whoever said, "He can't boil water without burning it," was talking about my father. Pa was the original poster child for bad cooks everywhere.

Ma was quick to shoo him out of the kitchen every time he took it into his head to help her prepare food. Sometimes his feelings got hurt because he always seemed to forget what happened the few times he did help Ma prepare a meal

Then came the time Pa learned his lesson and never offered to help cook again. That was the day he said to Ma, "I'll grow it and you cook it, Honey."

It all happened when I was about ten or eleven and Ma's sister, Aunt Maude, made arrangements to get married for the second time. Uncle Harold, her first husband turned out to be a drunk. Over the course of the ten years of their marriage he simply drank himself to death, one quart of corn whiskey at a time...

Aunt Maude, after burying him with few tears, said, "Once is enough for any woman to suffer through a marriage." She went on about her life as a not too grieved widow. She was a big good-looking woman, what they used to call "Junoesque." Although big in size, no one considered her fat. She was a big, healthy, good-looking blonde Viking woman who could to do a day's work as well as any man. She did just that on her small farm. Because most men found her almost six foot height to be a little more than they cared for her, suitors were few and far between.

Then along came Oscar. Five feet five inches tall, muscular and on the go continually is the only way to describe the man. He moved to Enid and bought a failing creamery for pennies on the dollar. He worked like he was demon possessed, up at four in the morning, every morning and busy almost from the time he opened his eyes until he could no longer keep them open at night. In a year's time he turned a failing business into a model of what hard work and intelligence can accomplish. Then he met Maude. His eyes lit up and he told her the first time they met, "By God, Lady, we are going to get married."

"Little man," she told him, "I am just too much woman for a little shrimp like you." She said later that she wasn't trying to be cruel, but to nip his unwanted attentions in the bud.

The way they met was enough to make a person believe in destiny. The route man who drove the "butter and egg truck" for Oscar quit. Oscar's manic work habits were too much for him to cope with. Oscar took over the driving himself while he looked for another driver. His third stop was Aunt Maude. He came tooling up the driveway from the dirt road past her farm, stopped by the back door and hopped out, all electric energy, seeming to move in every direction at once. After he parked the truck he quickly drove her to distraction.

"By God, Lady, we are going to get married." He looked up at her pure Viking features, blonde hair all braided and wrapped around her head like a golden crown and said, "I have been looking for you all of my life and it would take more than the devil himself to run me off. You are the most beautiful creation of the Lord himself." Oh how that man did go on.

That's when she called him a shrimp. He got on her bad side right from the very start. But he didn't let up; he dogged her around the farm as he loaded the cream cans and the eggs on the back of the old truck by himself. She saw right away how uncommonly strong he was. "He almost wears me out just to watch him," she said once.

He followed her around the farm that day as she did her chores until, after three hours she told him, "If you don't get off my property right now, I'm going to shoot you dead." She was serious when she said it.

Twice there had been problems she took care of by grabbing her old twelve gauge single shot and blasted away at the intruders. The first time it was a drunken Indian who ended up with his rear-end full of birdshot.

The second time it was an escaped convict from the McAllister, Oklahoma state prison. He had been serving life for murder and escaped. Aunt Maude telephoned the sheriff and told him, "Some terrible person tried to molest me. I shot him. He's here waiting for you." She hung up.

The man was hauled off, fatally shot with but hours to live. After that no man ever bothered Maude Barnes again until Oscar Broome entered her life.

When she threatened to shoot him, Oscar answered, "Well, by God, I hope you are a poor shot because if you don't kill me, you are going to have to marry me and nurse me back to health." He looked up at her and exclaimed, "You are so beautiful!"

She looked down and the man who barely came to her nose if he was standing straight and stated in no uncertain terms, "You stop cussin' around me, you go to church with me and at the end of one year, we'll see."

"Done." the elated man told her. "What church we going to?" She told him and he got back in his truck and made the rest of his rounds.

Sunday rolled around Oscar knocked loudly on the door. "I didn't know what time the services was so I figured to get here early." Early for Oscar was five AM. She slammed the door in his face and went back inside to get dressed. When she came out a half hour later, there he was still on the front porch.

"Since I am a little early, I'll help you with the milking and other chores. Tell me what you want done." The cows were driven in to the barn and milked, all four of them. Aunt Maude barely got one cow milked and Oscar had the other three finished off.

They took the milk buckets to the cooling cellar, a damp place that was so much cooler than the surrounding area. There it was left to wait until the cream rose to the top to be skimmed off. The skim milk was fed to her hogs and chickens.

"Maybe you ain't so little inside, after all," Aunt Maude told him. He grinned. "Well, come on in and I'll feed you." She made a big show of reluctance, but the man had begun to get to her with his full speed ahead attitude.

She fried up ham and eggs and whipped up some biscuits. With ham gravy over fried potatoes to top everything off she figured there was plenty for any two people. He all but inhaled his, drank a pot of coffee and polished off the rest of the biscuits and potatoes she had planned to have for an after church snack.

"Little man," she marveled she watched him eat, "how come you're not seven feet tall, the way you put all those groceries away?"

"Well, my future wife," he answered, "My growth got stunted from eating so much." They both laughed at his joke.

"It was then, right there on that first day we met, when I realized for sure he and I were going to get married," she confided in a letter to Ma. Instead of a year, it was just six months of courtship. The date was set and the announcements were sent out.

Only one man ever made fun of Oscar and Maude in his hearing. Oscar broke his jaw with a single punch. Whatever remarks were made after that time were not made in Oscar's presence.

When the letter came, Ma told Pa she wanted to go see her sister get married. "I know it is going to be just one more thing, but could you keep Davy with you? I don't think it would be a very good time for him to go to Maude's with me." I was so glad she said that. I for sure didn't want to be around all those women.

"We'll be just fine, Hon. Davy and me can just batch it for a few days." Pa's smile was full of confidence. Ma smiled at him in a not quite so confident manner. I guess she was thinking of Pa loose in the kitchen. The thing was, her sister was getting married so she put her misgivings aside and packed to go on the trip.

Ma prepared a big rib roast, fried up three chickens and baked a meatloaf. She figured she had prepared more than enough so our main meals for the week were taken care of while she would be gone. She also left us five fresh baked loaves of bread. Canned fruit was brought up out of the cellar and arranged so that all Pa had to do was to open a jar of preserves for our desert. She also baked us three apple pies "just in case."

Ma packed her suitcases and we took her into town in our old Ford truck. We waited inside the depot until the train going to Enid pulled in. Pa and I saw her aboard and watched the train pull out of the station.